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'Why I'm Switching From Chrome To Firefox and You Should Too' (fastcodesign.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an associate technology editor at Fast Company's Co.Design:
While the amount of data about me may not have caused harm in my life yet -- as far as I know -- I don't want to be the victim of monopolistic internet oligarchs as they continue to cash in on surveillance-based business models. What's a concerned citizen of the internet to do? Here's one no-brainer: Stop using Chrome and switch to Firefox... [W]hy should I continue to use the company's browser, which acts as literally the window through which I experience much of the internet, when its incentives -- to learn a lot about me so it can sell advertisements -- don't align with mine....?
Unlike Chrome, Firefox is run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a "healthy" internet. Its mission is to help build an internet in an open-source manner that's accessible to everyone -- and where privacy and security are built in. Contrast that to Chrome's privacy policy, which states that it stores your browsing data locally unless you are signed in to your Google account, which enables the browser to send that information back to Google. The policy also states that Chrome allows third-party websites to access your IP address and any information that site has tracked using cookies. If you care about privacy at all, you should ditch the browser that supports a company using data to sell advertisements and enabling other companies to track your online movements for one that does not use your data at all.... Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster...
Ultimately, Firefox's designers have the leeway to make these privacy-first decisions because Mozilla's motivations are fundamentally different from Google's. Mozilla is a nonprofit with a mission, and Google is a for-profit corporation with an advertising-based business model.. While Firefox and Chrome ultimately perform the same service, the browsers' developers approached their design in a radically different way because one organization has to serve a bottom line, and the other doesn't.
The article points out that ironically, Mozilla supports its developers partly with revenue from Google, which (along with other search engines) pays to be listed as one of the search engines available in Firefox's search bar.
"But because it relies on these agreements rather than gathering user data so it can sell advertisements, the Mozilla Corporation has a fundamentally different business model than Google."
Unlike Chrome, Firefox is run by Mozilla, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a "healthy" internet. Its mission is to help build an internet in an open-source manner that's accessible to everyone -- and where privacy and security are built in. Contrast that to Chrome's privacy policy, which states that it stores your browsing data locally unless you are signed in to your Google account, which enables the browser to send that information back to Google. The policy also states that Chrome allows third-party websites to access your IP address and any information that site has tracked using cookies. If you care about privacy at all, you should ditch the browser that supports a company using data to sell advertisements and enabling other companies to track your online movements for one that does not use your data at all.... Firefox protects you from being tracked by advertising networks across websites, which has the lovely side effect of making sites load faster...
Ultimately, Firefox's designers have the leeway to make these privacy-first decisions because Mozilla's motivations are fundamentally different from Google's. Mozilla is a nonprofit with a mission, and Google is a for-profit corporation with an advertising-based business model.. While Firefox and Chrome ultimately perform the same service, the browsers' developers approached their design in a radically different way because one organization has to serve a bottom line, and the other doesn't.
The article points out that ironically, Mozilla supports its developers partly with revenue from Google, which (along with other search engines) pays to be listed as one of the search engines available in Firefox's search bar.
"But because it relies on these agreements rather than gathering user data so it can sell advertisements, the Mozilla Corporation has a fundamentally different business model than Google."
I have been a Firefox user since before it was called Firefox, starting with the first buggy milestones during the final days of Netscape. I never bought into the whole Chrome thing as it had that distinct Internet Explorer feel to it.
Then, when Firefox Quantum rolled around, I saw myself forced to jump ship if I wanted to keep using the plugins and extensions I had come to rely on, including some extensions which I had written myself, but could not be ported to WebExtensions due to missing APIs.
That's when I decided to switch to Pale Moon, which is essentially a Firefox fork, but with significant differences, far less cruft and a truly free and open source model, without commercial involvement, like with Mozilla.
The Basilisk browser is the current preview of the next iteration of Pale Moon, and it will add some new features to Pale Moon, but retain the lean, low memory profile nature. I could honestly not be happier and would recommend that others switch to Pale Moon, Basilisk, or WaterFox (another Firefox fork).
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
There are more than just two browsers on the market... I've been a quite satisfied Opera user for years now. Ad-block without an extension. VPN without an extension. The fact the majority of the web is now designed for Webkit/Blink first, and Mozilla's rendering engine is just an afterthought. Opera is pretty much the best of all worlds.
Google can track you just fine even if you are not using Chrome.
Just by knowing the four or five web sites you visit most is enough to ID you.
The alternative to limited government is unlimited government.
I have no interest in the politics of which web browser to use. I use Safari, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox all the same time.
Safari for business browsing and other stuff. It is integrated best with MacOS naturally.
Edge when I have to do Windows stuff (in a VM) and it turns out to be a pretty good PDF viewer and some other interesting features.
Firefox when I am doing personal surfing and media playing. That way I keep my personal browser history separate from my business browser history. If I decide to wipe my personal browser history then I can do it and I don't lose the business history.
Chrome is best for JS debugging. It is really nice to be able to set breakpoints, single step, and inspect runtime state from inside the WebStorm IDE. Both Typescript and Javascript.
On top of that when I develop a web page or web app I use all of them to see how it looks in each and whether all the JS stuff works the same. That's the least I can do for my work, right?
I don't time to dither in browser wars.
Mozilla is imploding under incompetent leadership. Decision after decision is stripping away everything that made Firefox great. Sure it has better privacy by default than Chrome but it also has its fair share of privacy nightmares. As an example, most people don't know they're signed up for "experiments" by default and these experiments are *exempt* from Mozilla's privacy policy. There is little to no oversight over what is collected or how it is used.
Palemoon might be good but it doesn't have the developer base needed.
With the death of XUL in Firefox I switched to Chrome. It sucks, it can't even play video/animated gifs reliably, but it's the least awful of the mediocrity we have available.